Benchmark — portfolio autopsies

The BI unicorn that spent $800M to build a category already owned by Tableau and Salesforce.

One-click checkout for the open web. The CEO who said checkout could be bigger than Amazon. Then the board sued him.

The $17B customer service platform that tried to buy SurveyMonkey for $4.1B, got blocked by shareholders, and ended up going private at a $6.8B discount to its peak

Robo-advisor unicorn. UBS agreed to buy it for $1.4B. Deal collapsed. CEO resigned.

The personal styling subscription that peaked at $10B and fell 97% as fast fashion made curation irrelevant

Millions of travel photos, zero monetization path — Expedia pulled the plug.

A/B testing pioneer sold for a fraction of its valuation after free tools ate the market

The always-on social app that killed your battery before it could build your network.

The $110M startup that tried to build an Android without Google — raised money from Qualcomm, Microsoft, and Samsung to unseat Google's control of mobile, and shut down after 3 years

Brazil's Groupon raised $30M from Rocket Internet and Naspers. When the daily deals market globally collapsed, so did Peixe Urbano.

Ex-Hulu CEO raised $100M to build premium YouTube. Charged $3/month for early access to YouTube videos. YouTube made the creators say no. Sold for pennies.

Good Technology raised $425M, was about to IPO, sold to BlackBerry. BlackBerry killed the product within a year.

The social aggregator that invented the Like button — Facebook bought it, used the idea, killed the product.

The original social network that invented the template — and gave it to MySpace and Facebook to execute.

Jonathan Abrams built the first major social network, declined a $30M Google offer in 2003. Servers crashed under growth. MySpace overtook them in 2004. Sold to MOL Global for $100M in 2009. Shut entirely 2015.